Curie Brief
Turn on cookies to sign in
Signing in saves your progress to your Curie account. We can only do that with cookies on — turn them on to continue.
NewsA Missouri jury trial is testing whether Bayer's Roundup weedkiller is defectively designed, even after the US Supreme Court shielded the company from failure-to-warn lawsuits. Three women who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after regular Roundup use are at the center of the case. Bayer, which faces roughly 65,000 claims, is also pursuing a $7.25 billion class action settlement to resolve most existing and future suits.
A new Missouri trial is putting Bayer's Roundup weedkiller back in the spotlight, this time over design-defect claims rather than labeling failures. Three women — Theresa Aretino, Cynthia Fernandez, and Betty Larkin — allege they developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after regular Roundup use. Fernandez died before the trial began. Their attorneys argue Monsanto never adequately tested the product, and that EPA approval doesn't equal safety.
Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018, counters that decades of global regulatory reviews — including by the EPA — have consistently found glyphosate, Roundup's active ingredient, safe and non-carcinogenic. The company argues design-defect claims are effectively blocked by the Supreme Court's June ruling, which barred failure-to-warn suits by requiring herbicide makers to use EPA-approved labels exactly as written.
The trial is being closely watched as a bellwether for how courts will handle the remaining claims that fall outside the Supreme Court's ruling.
By the Numbers:
Why it matters: The outcome could shape the legal landscape for thousands of Roundup plaintiffs and signal whether design-defect theories can survive where warning-label claims could not — with major implications for Bayer's financial exposure and future litigation strategy.
